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This week’s snowstorm has neither made nor broken anyone’s political career. While today’s question appears to be framed to elicit such prognostications, I caution everyone from taking the bait.

The question at hand touches on many different subjects. The obvious issue is whether mishandling blizzards can derail the political ambitions of elected officials. In isolation, bungling the logistics of one snowstorm’s cleanup (or being out of town during said snowstorm) will not kill a political career.

The problem arises when that one misstep is part of a longer string of fumbles. It is disingenuous to suggest that John Lindsay’s presidential ambitions or Bill McNichols and Michael Blandic’s reelection bids were doomed by one catastrophic snowstorm. The snowstorms that these mayors mishandled were part of a series of mistakes that demonstrated their political vulnerabilities.

Lindsay fought nearly every union in New York during his first term as mayor. As these controversies escalated, the transportation infrastructure shut down, the garbage did not get picked up, raw sewage flowed into rivers, and racial, ethnic and religious minorities were at each other’s throats. McNichols’s loss probably owed more to demographic changes, an economic downturn and a corruption scandal in his administration. Blandic proved unable to manage the political machine he inherited from Richard Daley.

In context, then, not picking up snow in a timely fashion merely reinforced the preexisting perception that these politicians were inept.

While this is clearly a black eye for the Christie administration, the governor has room to redeem himself. Based on the comments that I’ve read on NJ.com, it looks like New Jerseyans’ biggest concern is that both Christie and Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno were out of the state during the storm. New Jersey is still figuring out how to have a lieutenant governor (they’ve only had the office for a year).

I suspect that in light of this mishap, there will be some type of informal rule barring the governor and lieutenant governor from being out of the state at the same time. If Christie publicly issues a mea culpa and introduces this informal rule, the controversy could easily evaporate. However, if additional mistakes follow this incident, then that will spell political trouble.

This being said, pundits need to be very careful about prematurely declaring up-and-coming politicians presidential candidates. Many are called, and few are chosen.

My next book (which will come out this fall) focuses on contemporary racial politics in Newark. As a result, I have had the privilege to interview a number of political officials in the state. One of them pointed out that most recent New Jersey governors have been touted as “presidential material” in the first year of their first term. Needless to say, Woodrow Wilson was the last (and only) New Jersey governor to actually make it to the White House. I don’t mean to cast aspersions on Gov. Chris Christie’s aspirations, whatever they are; I’m just saying that we should be as cautious in counting him in as we may be in counting him out over this one little incident.

I also think that it’s unfair to compare Christie to Cory Booker. Mayors and governors occupy different levels of government and serve different roles during a snow crisis. Mayors — not governors — are the first line of defense in local snow removal. Thus, it makes sense that Booker would be out in the streets meeting his constituents’ needs. Moreover, Booker’s domain is all of 24 square miles, not an entire state. It is just not feasible to expect Christie to be out shoveling snow and delivering diapers to more than 7,400 square miles and nearly 9 million residents.

For this to be framed as a political harbinger for 2013 is also a little shortsighted. Booker has strongly hinted that in light of the conditions of Mark Zuckerberg’s $100 million donation to the Newark Public School System, he may need to run for a third term in Newark in 2014. While I am not naïve to the fact that shoveling snow has generated positive press for Booker, I can attest to the fact that press or no press, he would have been out in the streets. There is just no way that the Cory Booker whom I have known and studied for nearly a decade could have sat idly by and not shoveled something. It’s just not his personality.

In the end, I implore everyone to put this emergency into its proper context. We cannot expect governors to act like mayors and vice versa. Moreover, to attempt to use one incident to predict any person’s political future has its limits. We’ll gain a better sense of each man’s trajectory only when we study how they handle years of crises, challenges and mundane administrative tasks.

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